Free Guy is a smart, supercharged comedy about gaming

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A lady falls in love with a man-made intelligence encased by a male physique in two very totally different movies this week. I’m Your Man is the European art-house tackle the theme whereas Free Man is the accessible, family-friendly, big-budget Hollywood studio iteration.

Free Man has Ryan Reynolds because the eponymous Man, who thinks he’s only a financial institution worker in a metropolis with an incredibly excessive crime charge. In truth, Man is an NPC, or non-playable character, in a Grand Theft Auto-style multiplayer recreation who feels stirrings of sentience when he sees the leather-trousered avatar of a gamer, performed in each ranges of actuality by Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer. The 2 have an effervescent, vintage-screwball-comedy chemistry that helps propel the movie, already supercharged with a wonderful script that builds working gags into Jenga towers of silliness. Propulsive path from Shawn Levy leads in the direction of a satisfyingly everything-going-off-at-once climax.

The spectacular supporting solid (Taika Waititi, Lil Rel Howery, Joe Keery and lots of extra) might be upstaged, so far as youthful viewers are involved, by the cameos from YouTube and Twitch personalities equivalent to Pokimane, Jacksepticeye and DanTDM.

Not solely is that this probably one of many smartest movies about gaming and the gaming business, it’s maybe the funniest comedy about mental property rights but made — and perhaps the one one the truth is. Paradoxically, it achieves that final aim by cleverly synthesising concepts present in a slew of movies — from Her, The Truman Present and The Lego Movie franchise — and from that mix manages to style one thing unique.

★★★★☆

In UK and US cinemas from August 13